hold my hand forever (because we're god's favorite children)
by Gray Doll
Summary: "He had told her once about endless universes, endless possibilities, but she can't quite recall how it went." Ten lives Jane and Lisbon might have lived, and the one they do. Jane/Lisbon
1. One

**a.n/** Jane and Lisbon, presented in ten different ways. Or something like that. I don't even know what I'm doing lately – a thing comes to mind, I sit down and write it. I wouldn't find peace until I wrote _this_, so I did. These ten (well, eleven if you count the actual one) "lives" are unrelated, in a way each chapter is a stand-alone, but they're all together as a part of the "bigger thing" that is, ultimately, Jane and Lisbon. I don't even know if that makes sense. Some will be angsty, some will be sweet, in some Jane is a total jerk (surprise surprise). I hope you enjoy it, and stick around for the ride!

*****edit - Story cover by _Elphie_ over at TDA forum!*****

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**hold my hand forever (because we're god's favorite children)**

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**ONE**

**.**

**.**

Here's the thing about fairytales.

They're for kids, they're about kids, and they're full of lies.

(Lies, because they're not really about kids, are they? They never were.)

**-;**

Teresa does not believe in fairytales.

**-;**

For some reason, Disney movies always made her cry. She's only been able to get through the whole Lion King a couple of times and it claws and tears at her heartstrings every single time. She can't handle Cinderella and Pocahontas, has never seen Snow White, and loves Beauty and the Beast – but the end result of all these movies? They rip her heart to pieces.

Teresa, at the age of thirteen, cries easily. And maybe it's the little girl in her (because she is _not_ a little girl anymore) who still believes that she should believe in a fairytale, that makes her cry. Or maybe it's because it is blatantly obvious that nothing is ever what it seems. And Walt Disney has never gotten it right.

(And she knows that's a fucking lie as well because Walt was the only one who gave Belle exactly what she wanted.)

**-;**

Teresa does not want to grow old.

**-;**

She's always seen her father as a man who helps people. She doesn't know if that's something she's looked up to all her life or something she's so sickeningly accustomed to that she has a struggle with her own psyche.

Either way, her father has been saving people from fires ever since Teresa was the tender age of nothing.

Teresa remembers always seeing her mother stressed out; whether it be about something her father said or where her father decided he was going to stay the night after fighting blazes. She always remembers the crow's feet just at the corner of her eyes and her wrinkled skin after a long day at work, coming home and not finding her husband there. She always remembers her mother's tired eyes and the shakiness of her voice and she remembers every single one of her mother's birthdays.

She doesn't know if that makes her a selfish brat of a daughter who's never been grateful for anything or a strikingly honest person, but she thinks that her mother is ugly. She thinks this cruel, cruel world and her terribly good father with his fires have made her mother old and ugly and starch white with fear sometimes.

Teresa's never wanted to be like her mother.

**-;**

Teresa does not want children.

**-;**

All she remembers now about being young – besides her mother worrying all the time and then dying and her father becoming a forlorn mess of a man – is that she hated it.

She hated going to school. She hated coming home from school. She hated wearing a responsible look and sitting for hours in straight-backed chairs having to talk to her brothers' teachers as though she were their mother. She hated not being able to bake with her mom on Saturdays or to go with her dad to the park on Sundays. Teresa hated being a teenager almost more than anything. Mostly because it was the biggest letdown she's ever suffered. But it's not like she could have done anything about it. All she could do was endure it and wait patiently for the day she would turn eighteen and would officially be called an adult.

She does not want children because she does not want them to hate being thirteen, fourteen, or fifteen. She does not want them to look back on their lives and think their dad was a selfish bastard who did nothing but drink himself to a mess on a dirty kitchen floor and beat the shit out of them because he could.

She does not want them to hate her. She does not want them to hate themselves. She does not want them to feel like she did.

**-;**

Teresa does not want a family.

**-;**

Any good memory she has of her family has been washed down the drain or pushed so far back in the bookshelves of her mind she can't even recognize it when she tries to draw it back up.

All she knows about her family is that she never really had one. And how can she want another if she never even had a proper one in the first place?

She remembers her brothers' tearful goodbye when she left the house and she remembers realizing that they were not crying at all but she was just imagining things, seeing what she wanted to see, because they'd all turned hard like stone and they all thought they must have done something wrong because they weren't good enough for her any more. She remembers feeling the same thing when she'd gather them all in her bedroom and lock the door and hold them close while listening to their father shout and pummel the door.

She does not want a family because she does not want to let them down or scare them or pawn them off to someone else who isn't supposed to take care of them in her stead. And she can't want what she's never had.

**-;**

She does not want any of it.

**-;**

So she willingly kicks everything aside and decides she wants to follow him to the ends of the world.

Fresh out of high school and well on her way of becoming her mother's worst nightmare, were she alive, she meets Patrick Jane. He's beautiful and he has hair wrought from sunlight and gold and a smile full of white teeth that can stop traffic, and she almost feels her knees buckle and give way when he takes her hand in his and brings it to her lips.

He doesn't even blink when she invites him to her small low-rent apartment and he follows, and she comes apart in seconds when she pushes him down on her couch and straddles him – oh, her parents would have been so _appalled _(back when).

Teresa tells him how she doesn't want anything to do with a fairytale wedding, how she never wants a wedding. How she doesn't want a family with laughing kids bouncing around and a big white house. How she doesn't want anything but the world in the palm of her hands.

He smiles when she tells him this, drops a kiss on her bare shoulder and tells her she can do anything she wants.

She doesn't do anything stupid and tell him that's the nicest thing anyone has ever said about her. (Even if it is. Because she doesn't want to ruin the best moment of her whole life with childish heartthrobs and _feelings_.)

Her brothers disapprove.

But Teresa does not care. Because if there's one thing her brothers cannot hold against her is having themselves lived a life that is anything remote to normal or safe. "_He's an asshole_," Tommy says to her and Teresa just laughs. He has always sounded too immature of his own good.

Obviously, she does not listen to her brothers.

And her life goes off without a hitch. Teresa is eighteen and a high school graduate and doesn't go to bed until the sun is high in the sky and gets amazing orgasms and all is right in the world. She does not feel anything remotely close to falling or losing her head and footing or _anything_.

She feels good and she feels alive and she feels like she can do anything she wants.

("You can, Teresa," Patrick says, and his smile is a bright cut of teeth across his beautiful, beautiful face.)

**-;**

There are certain things that people always forget.

One of them is that fairytales are not about kids; that Peter Pan is not a boy anymore.

**-;**

They're lying wrapped in a white satin sheet, on a warm August night with starlight leaking through the curtains when she asks him where he came from. And then - one minute she's eating strawberries and running a hand down the smooth expanse of his stomach and trying desperately not to look for an escape and the next he's over her, up against her, and not close enough at all, and he's gorgeous and she can't, for the life of her, know what the hell's going on in those slanted eyes of his.

He chuckles and gives her a kiss that tastes like honey and ash and tells her she doesn't really want to know where he came from.

And she thinks that's stupid, because she obviously does if she asks.

In the end he just shrugs and begins, and she listens with a strawberry held inches away from her open mouth and her eyes wide; and she cannot help that feeling she gets in her stomach, that coiling and clenching thing as he tells her about the streets he grew up in, the man he killed by accident when he was a kid, and the mental institution, and the drug dealers, and that guy who saw something in him and took him under his wing and dressed him up all pretty and taught him how to smile and make money and kill other men and warm his way to people's hearts. She listens and blinks as he tells her about his days in Paris and Milan and Tokyo, about all the people who have wanted him dead and his days as a writer. (_"You'll never read anything I've written, trust me."_)

And she does – trust him.

He tells her everything and when he's done and not being sentimental or asking if she's okay, and she thinks she just loves him that exact moment. Because no one else would have told her this in the first place. And he doesn't want to know if she's okay, and he knows she knows it so he isn't pretending to care – and she thinks that finally, _finally_ someone can see what she thinks and what she wants and what she doesn't want to hear.

She listens intently when he tells her about having complete and utter control over your emotions, and she already knows because she has seen it – in his eyes and behind his smile. He can turn everything off if he wants because he can and why wouldn't he? Why wouldn't _she_?

She loves the poetry of it all; wonders what her broken family would say.

**-;**

Nobody admits it, but the truth is always ugly.

You can have it differently, though, if you want; you can say, Peter Pan is not insane, Peter Pan is not a murderer, Peter Pan does not steal little children and sacrifices them in his games of gold and lies.

You can say; Peter Pan will always be a boy, innocent and pure.

**-;**

On a quiet day he asks her, "Have you ever thought about all the ways we could have met?"

She's tracing the lines of his cheeks, slow, gentle, and she tries to imagine if the blood filling his throat and beating behind his ears smells like honey, thick and sweet and a thing to make you drown and die and love it. She tries to be still, hold that feeling in her chest.

"No," she says, and lays her head down on his chest. She doesn't bother to fight back her smile when his hand reaches up to wind in her hair.

"Infinite universes, infinite possibilities," he murmurs, and she imagines them walking hand in hand through the crowded streets of London in the nineteenth century, she in pastels and a corset and a prim hat and he with his golden hair curling over his shoulders under his own stiff brown hat. It almost makes her laugh.

She asks him if in every one of them, all those infinite universes, he finds her. And he tells her that of course he does, and she doesn't know if she should believe him but she does because it's the easiest thing to do, and she can do anything she wants, besides.

"But have you thought about it?" he continues after a while, sitting up, and she thinks he looks like a living, breathing painting, swathed in sunlight and covered in white bedsheets. "About all the ways we might have been together?"

They talk a lot, lately, because they can and because it feels wonderful and it makes her feel free. People don't talk much in fairytales, and when they do, it's always childish decelerations of endless love and happiness within the big smiling family. So she whispers, "Tell me about it," eyes never leaving his, because there's something about the way he talks and the way he makes her talk that makes it the most interesting thing she can think of.

He smiles, a slow, blooming thing, and falls back against the bed again, head facing up, taking her with him. She falls atop his chest and laughs, thinks that there isn't anything else she has to worry about but his gorgeous white teeth and his blond curls and the way his body spreads beneath hers. "We could have been a fairytale," he says, hand running down her bare back. "Or I could have torn you apart."

She grins against his skin. "Are you sure about that? I think I could have handled you."

In the end, he tells her that their fairytale would begin the way all good fairytales do. With an innocent, frustrated little girl lost in the woods, and a beautiful monster. "Like Red Riding Hood?" she asks, eyes gleaming and hair thrown back over her shoulder, and he laughs.

"I was thinking more along the lines of Peter Pan."

She arches an eyebrow, laughs. "Oh?" she asks, a breathless thing, and she thinks that despite what she promised herself all those years ago, despite not believing in those stupid things, she's truly living her perfect fairytale.

**-;**

Peter Pan is not a fairytale.

Peter Pan is not a boy any more.

**-;**

She walks hand in hand with him in all the great cities of the world, and in all the small villages that no one has ever heard of. He takes her North and then South, to all the ruins of the ancients and to the planet's greatest markets, they dine in expensive restaurants and on rooftops of abandoned buildings, they travel through deserts on the backs of camels and watch entire cities sprawl beneath their feet from snowy mountaintops.

They do anything they want. And that's the best part, she thinks every time she presses her lips to his, that he didn't lie to her; she can, she can do anything she wants.

As long as she's with him, she can live the fairytale she never knew she wanted.

**-;**

There are no boys in Neverland, and there is no magic and there are no laughs.

Teresa ought to know this – she did, once.

She did.

**-;**

She thinks she has ruined everything the day she tells him she loves him; it feels like the wind has been knocked out of her the moment the words leave her mouth, tiny little letters weaved together but they can do so much harm and suddenly her heart is pounding so hard it feels it shall burst and there's a buzz in her ears and will he leave her now-

He grins, full of teeth, and pulls her close for a kiss.

Teresa knows – or at least, the rational, practical part of her that never wanted a family or a wedding or anything remotely close to a most pretty happily ever after – that she shouldn't believe in this spark in his eyes or the sincerity of his big, big smile, that she should remember all he's told her about that man he killed and the people he's deceived and the people who want him dead and the man who took him in and taught him how to charm and deceive;

She doesn't.

All she remembers now is the very first time he kissed her like this, that first day he saw her leaving the school building after her big graduation and the way she led him to her apartment and he didn't say a word, merely smiled and made her feel like she mattered, like she was invincible, like she was a queen right out of a book. All she remembers now is the way he had told her she could do anything she wanted.

What she doesn't remember is what it is she had wanted to do in the first place.

She starts telling him that she loves him regularly after that, because it's the truth and if she doesn't want to lie she doesn't have to. She starts letting herself accept it, she starts allowing herself to be swathed in it until his name and the way his hair shines like gold and his whole face lights up when he smiles are burnt permanently into her retinas, until it all feels wonderful and beautiful and she's a bundle of smiles and sewn together sunshine.

It's like a fairytale.

She smiles, lays her head against his chest and says, "I've always wanted a life like a fairytale."

He says something that sounds like "You never did," but it's late and she's sleepy and she's probably hearing things, so she closes her eyes and smiles when he kisses her forehead and turns off the bedside lamp.

The last thing she thinks of before she falls asleep is that of course she did. The last think she thinks of before she falls asleep is that she's living the most beautiful love story of all, that she must be God's favorite child.

**-;**

The truth is, Peter Pan is not a story about a boy that never wants to grow up.

Peter Pan is an adult. Peter Pan has a family like a bundle of blood and screaming kids that can't escape themselves. Peter Pan is a monster.

Peter Pan is-

**-;**

It's April and the birds are singing and the sun is shining and the skies are the brightest blue when he leaves her.

And Teresa remembers being a child and then a teenager and then meeting a man wrought from gold and unspoken promises hidden behind a sunlit smile.

And she knows, that Wonderland is full of men and not boys, and Wendy was a fool, and gold doesn't really exist, and the sun is a lie invented by the night, and her life is a ruin like the ones they once visited, and she is stupid, stupid, _stupid_-

In love.

He had told her once about infinite universes, infinite possibilities, but she can't quite recall how it went. She understands, though, that in every single universe she must have made the same mistake.

**-;**

Here's the thing about fairytales.


	2. Two

**hold my hand forever (because we're god's favorite children)**

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**TWO**

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**.**

Teresa Lisbon doesn't know what the world looks like anymore.

**-;**

Time moves slow and almost not at all in her room. Sometimes, all she sees is black walls. The nurses tell her they're white, but she insists they're black. For some reason, it seems important to say that. The doctors also say she should write this in the first person, but she doesn't like herself much, so she'll just do this in third person, like an author, like she knows what's going to happen at the end.

(She doesn't, if anyone happened to wonder. She just likes to pretend she does. She thinks, that being the author is better than being the princess or the hero or the villain. And the doctors can't control her feelings or her thoughts, even though a part of her knows that's exactly why she's still here.)

**-;**

Sometimes she wonders what the sun looks like up close. She can see light from the occasional window, but she imagines the real thing must be so much better. And scorching. Definitely scorching.

**-;**

There's a boy, or a man, or whatever, on her floor. His name isn't important, but he has this sunshine hair that puffs from his head like a newborn chick's feathers, and this curve of the mouth that looks like sewn together platinum. He has seen the cut on her face – it's hard to miss – and sometimes, she imagines how he kisses. She's only kissed one boy in her entire life, and it was sloppy and wet and she felt tired after, like all the time she had waited was wasted in that awkward meaningless thing.

But that's unimportant and she doesn't have to remember it because she probably won't even see that guy ever again. And, besides-

He catches her eye from across the lunch room, and her hand slowly brushes across her scar, the – awful ugly hateful fucking – scar that landed her here. He smiles at her.

He's new. She can tell. No one smiles in these places.

**-;**

She was never a big fan of the sun, and it was almost entirely because of her sensitive skin and her sensitive eyes and all those things that make people prefer clouds and stars.

In here, she thinks she might drown from the absence of sunlight. She thinks she's become like a plant (or a pretty wilting flower), and it almost makes her laugh. Almost.

**-;**

She wonders how he got here. People look at him through their two way doors and see his smile widen and widen until it becomes a full blown thing and he realizes they're looking. Her roommate, an anorexic red headed girl named Grace, talks and talks about how cute he is. And Teresa agrees, but she can't understand how anyone would want to fall in love at a mental hospital. Every form of relationship seems like it would be doomed from the start.

(When the lights are off and she closes her eyes to go to sleep, his sunbeam of a smile is burned into her retinas.)

**-;**

There are gaps in her memory. Periods and periods of time she cannot remember no matter how much she tries. She wishes that someone could shed some light. It's awful, not remembering. But sometimes it isn't so bad.

**-;**

He catches up with her after one of her therapy sessions. His fingers are threading through his shining wrought hair, over and over and over, and she thinks of needles sewing skins; in out in out in out. He has one of those lazy grins on his face, slow and a thing to make people weak in the knees and she just wonders why he's here. He looks beautiful and warm and normal – or maybe she's forgotten what normal looks like. That's a always a possibility.

His eyes remind her of tree leaves, and she doesn't even know why. Maybe it's that little slant that makes him look the happiest sad, or that blue green spark behind the skin, or maybe she's thinking of plants and flowers and suns again. She feels something clench in her stomach, and it's the most emotion she has felt in a long, long time.

"Hi," he says, and it's all birds and honey and cotton candy and all those things she thought she had forgotten. It makes her imagine a colorful cloak draped over a gray, soulless, heart-shaped box. "I'm Patrick. Patrick Jane. What's your name?"

She wills herself to stare at him, eyes wide and dark with so many things she will never see because she's not allowed mirrors, and waits for his grin to fade and his gold to turn to meaningless ash. She's scared more people than she can count with this look and her jagged scar – and he does not seem fazed. His lips quirk into an even bigger smile, and she wants him to leave her alone because she has no idea how to handle him, _this_. Her throat feels tighter than it should be and before she can run away she blurts out, "Why are you here?"

His smile grows until it stretches from ear to ear, and it looks like a knife wound. Before she can comprehend, his lips are next to her ear and his breath is scorching and his fingers are laced with hers but she can't quite feel them-

"Every moment, I want to die."

She feels like she should say something, or maybe she should just gasp and be dramatic about it, or maybe wave it away like it's nothing. The truth is, she hasn't felt confused in a long, long time, but she does now, and she leans in, and suddenly she wants to kiss him. She thinks that he does, too, but he stops right before her lips, their breaths trapped like a wounded animal between their mouths, and asks her, "What about you?"

Her thoughts are tangled and her heart is racing – or perhaps it's the opposite. Her palms are warm and cold all at once, and her stomach aches, like she's shoved too much food inside that she can't hold it all in.

She tries to breathe like a normal human being, in out in out in out, like his fingers through his hair, like needles through fabric and through skin.

Before she came here, all she wanted was to be enough. To make others contented. If that meant starving herself until she was tiny and perfect, then she would. If it meant she had to bleed her turmoil and her anger and her sadness out, then she would. Her body was the tool of constant experiments to reach perfection. Because she had to be enough and she had to live up to everyone's expectations and she had, she had, she had, and she _would_.

She thinks that these things aren't things you share with someone you have just met. So she tries to make the lump in her throat go away, and it feels like swallowing glass, but she says, "I wanted to be enough."

There's something tired in her words and there's something tired in his eyes; his fingers are touching her face, trickling down her scar. She cannot quite feel it, but the knowledge that he's touching her makes her feel mournful. She doesn't know if he's still smiling. She supposes he is, because his lips are still stretched and curved and sunlit, but it no longer looks like a smile. He closes the small, fearful gap between their mouths, and she lets her own lips curl a little against his; a tiny little half smile, but it's there.

He breathes into her that moment, ocean salt and lemons and something like tea, something like blood, and whispers really soft, "You should smile more. It scares away the demons."

When he walks away, she can't help but let her smile grow.

**-;**

She decides one day, that the sun isn't scorching at all. She decides, that same day, that she isn't wilting after all.

**-;**

They don't exactly speak for a week after that, but she doesn't feel like they truly need to. He'll see her smile at him across the lunch room and he'll give her that look that says all that his wide wide grins do and her insides will flutter.

The doctors notice that she's lighter, nowadays. Her steps are bouncier and she seems to glide across the white corridors, her eyes glow under the fluorescents. They ask her how she feels and all the normal everyday questions, but it looks as though they might think there's a different answer there than her usual. She answers all their questions with a lilt to her voice that she doesn't quite realize she has until later.

She sees them writing less. She knows that it's a good sign and when her most recent session is over, one of the doctors smiles at her.

**-;**

Her roommate wakes her up one morning, eyes bright with excitement. There's a near hysterical hitch to her voice when she says, "One of the patients is having a breakdown!"

It's always an event to behold when a patient breaks down, one that Teresa doesn't like too much. People gather around the patient in whatever room he or she happens to be in, and watch with wide eyes until the doctors come to soothe them and drag them away.

Grace yanks her out of bed and into the hallway, and it feels like running through a tunnel with no lights on.

There is Patrick (_I'm Patrick, Patrick Jane; complete with a beaming smile and an outstretched hand to shake_) but he's not smiling and there's no sunlight anywhere near him, and he's ripping the golden bird feathers from his head and there are streams of tears that look like blood running from his eyes. He's screaming, loud and harsh, but he doesn't look like he knows he's even doing it. Her breath catches, catches and stops, and her knees are buckling – he's hysterical, he sounds like he's being stabbed to death and she frantically wonders where his smile is. His wrist is pale and there's a shallow cut, vertical, angry and red like a mouth open on a cry. She's running towards him before she can stop herself.

She can barely see through her own tears; the world is a fog of gray and white and bright fluorescent lights and she screams, "What are you doing?"

For a fraction of a second, everything – time itself, her life itself – seems to stop. He looks up at her, his swift fingers like needles stopping in their quest to rip the beautiful gold from his head. His eyes are brighter than she's ever seen them, swirling and unfocused, his face flushed. She realizes then that she's kneeling next to him, cold seeping from the floor through the think fabric of her pants, like freezing water, but she doesn't mind. She can already hear the doctors coming, rushing, and she traces the cut on his wrist with shaking fingers.

She's sobbing and she wants to stop but she can't – his fingers are rough and covered in blood, and when he reaches out to wipe the tears from her face she pulls away.

People, the doctors, move her away with hands of steel and she watches as they take him to that white bright room, where they'll talk to him and hold him down and _calm_ him down and fix up the cut until it's nothing. Then they'll check his room to make sure there's nothing sharp, and then they'll check again. Maybe they'll double his medication, or change it completely. She hopes they don't move him.

She hopes-

**-;**

She has her first nightmare in weeks. He looks like an angel bathed in sunlight, but his wrists are open and his eyes are so bright they could be white.

She wakes up crying, and her room has never felt darker. Her roommate asks her what's wrong, and when Teresa tells her, she seems genuinely surprised. "There was no breakdown," she says, but she looks sad and Teresa remembers that there was, and she understands Grace doesn't want to talk about it. She understands.

**-;**

Her roommate looks worried about her lately. The doctors want her to continue on and their eyes are heavy with worry when she gets up later and when she doesn't want to get out of bed at all. But she hasn't seen blood in a long time. She sees pain and desperation and guilt every day, but never are they as strong as they were in Patrick's eyes. He's still shut in his white walled room, she knows, and he may have a few more days left.

Teresa finds herself wishing that he was okay. That he had no problems. That there was no reason for him to be here, really.

(There are gaps in her memory and she can't remember everything and it's never been more profound that it is now and she tries, and tries, and tries to remember everything-)

At least her theory on relationships inside the hospital has proven to be true, even if they were never in a relationship, because they will never be able to escape themselves.

**-;**

Teresa doesn't think the sun is very kind, but at least he isn't forgetful. She thinks, that some times he has to go away and hide behind clouds and mountaintops because he can't always be beaming down at her and everyone else. At least he isn't scorching. He isn't really at all deadly. No one will convince her otherwise.

**-;**

He comes out of the room while she's on her way to take a shower, a bright figure limned in gold walking down the gray-white corridor, and he looks exactly the same as he when he appeared in the ward for the first time.

His hair is all feathery tufts and his eyes are wide and they look like morning dew leaves again, but this time it all looks different and she can't put her finger on why. He smiles at her, but it's light and fleeting and she only imagines the gray heart shaped box and not the colorful cloak covering it.

She turns away from him, and it's the first time she wonders whether he's just another ghost that plagues her.

**-;**

She's not sure she wants to fly to the sun anymore. She doesn't know why.

**-;**

(Sometimes, she wants to peel back all her skin.)

She breathes every moment, eats all her food, and the nurses aren't harsh with her. No one watches over her like they used to, and they don't check her room for sharp objects three times a day any more. She thinks that maybe, maybe she's getting out soon.

She wants to stay. She doesn't feel better. She is _not_ better. She still thinks of scissors and cut flesh and bleeding out everything-

She wants his feather hair on her pillow and his sunbeam laugh against her breast. Sexual desire grows stronger when a person is healed – this she heard one of the nurses say. She doesn't care much for the specifics, but she would like to kiss him on top of a river bridge and hold his hand in front of a crowd. She imagines them getting out and growing old, and maybe then she wouldn't be so scared and neither would he.

She would like that. More than anything else.

(Sometimes, she wants to just grab a knife and end this farce.)

**-;**

"Sometimes, I wonder," she tells him, and her fingers brush against his arm. They're in the lunch room and it's not too crowded but she likes to keep her voice low and quiet these days. "What _happened_?"

His eyes are jewel bright when he turns to look at her, but there's no genuine smile and she thinks of gray clouds and thick mists. "To land me here?"

She nods, a quick but careful thing, and watches intently as he shrugs and shifts ever so slightly closer to her. His shirt is a little too white, she notices – it's almost hard to look at it, it's almost blinding. She doesn't care much. She has this feeling that she's pouring her soul through her eyes to him when she says, very quietly, "Will you tell me?"

She doesn't quite expect his answer, but it's not shocking, and maybe she should get up and leave but she doesn't; "Will you keep a secret?" he asks, and when she nods, "I killed someone I loved, and then someone who loved me."

At first, she doesn't say anything. She blinks once, twice. Takes a moment to gather her thoughts, takes a moment to remind herself that the sun is a fickle thing that shouldn't really be trusted but it's the only warm thing in her life. "I don't believe you."

He almost frowns at that. Almost. She doesn't think she has ever seen him frown. "Why not?"

"Because." She isn't sure herself. "You wouldn't do that. Not you. And besides-" she pauses, takes a deep breath, "you wouldn't be _here_ if you'd done that. They would have locked you up somewhere-"

"But they don't know it." He's smiling, only he's not. There's that smile where his lips are stretched and curved but they're not quite happy and it's more of a grimace than anything else. "Not yet, at least."

Teresa stands up, and before she leaves she says, "I don't believe you." _You wouldn't do that_.

He wouldn't.

(The same day she catches up with him on the way to their rooms and says, "Can you keep a secret as well?" and when he nods, "Sometimes, I forget. And it scares me.")

**-;**

It's not hard to get burned by the sun. The truth is, it's much harder to avoid getting too close to it, even when you want to stay away – but it's alright, because you don't. It's not scorching, remember?

It's a thing to cling to. It's life. It's light. It's-

**-;**

Her therapist offers her to leave the hospital. She is doing well, he says, looking forward to things, joining in activities, reacting well to her medication. She thinks about this long and hard. She thinks about the lush green that lingers outside the door. She thinks about the friends she left behind, those she can remember and the ones she can't but there's no need to worry because one day she will. She barely remembers the feeling of being alive but she knows it's there, somewhere, still aching inside her. And she thinks that this is what she wants - to be alive again.

And yet, there is something terrifying about leaving the safety of the hospital. But the white walls look more white with each day and there isn't much black left now, and she knows this is a sign. The only thing holding her back is sunlight inside white walls and blue green leave eyes and the horrible feeling she's going to lose something – even if she's never had it – too great for freedom.

So she talks about to her therapist, the sunlit smiles that haunt her. Her only last tie to the hospital. Her one last anchor that makes her cling to the white walls and tiled floors and fluorescent lights.

And that, that is when things become very, very bad.

The doctors put her in an isolated room. They try to tell her terrifying things. Things that she doesn't want to hear. She wants to bleed away this pain, to escape from their white coats and their white walls and their harsh words.

"He isn't real," they say.

One of the nurses touches her cheek and says, "He is not real. I am. Do you see the difference?"

No, she doesn't see the difference – this is what she aches to say. Because he's right there, right behind the nurse's back, smiling at her like a sunbeam with golden tufts of feather hair on his head.

He mouths, _I love you_, and this when Teresa starts to scream.

**-;**

The plans to leave the hospital are thrown out of the window.

She is fed her food by nurses and she is given more and more medication. He doesn't come as often, but whenever he does, his fingers brush the roots of her hair and his eyes are always bright like leaves glowing with morning dew, even though the outline of his body is fading each time and he looks more silver now than gold. The doctors watch her closely, and her body is constantly shaking – she doesn't know why anymore.

She doesn't know who is real. Maybe he is and she isn't.

**-;**

She had always thought Icarus was a stupid, stupid man. Then she pauses, tries to remember who Icarus is. Tries to distinguish the line between herself, Patrick, the sun, herself again. And it's all getting so much harder.

**-;**

Tommy comes to visit, which he never does, and cries at the sight of his sister. There is something so forlorn about it all, and Teresa just melts into her chair, covering her eyes with her hands. She can see Patrick in the broken darkness she creates, his vibrant eyes and his quirky smile.

She can't stop hoping that everyone has it wrong, or that maybe instead, she was the one made up inside someone's head. She thinks that would be better – being someone else's ghost, draping herself over them and burrowing into their bones and making them go insane. She can't stand the thought that all the hard work she's done has left her in the very beginning of this goddamned hospital with only the ashes of what she wants and needs. She aches for him to be real, to be tangible underneath her fingertips and for the others to see their love.

(She knows they say _she_'s real, but she wants to be sure of it too. As much as she would like to be an illusion, there's a part of her that aches to be alive and real as well.)

**-;**

Perhaps light is a fake thing, a trick invented by the night. Perhaps there is no sun at all, but maybe there is and what then? _What then_?

**-;**

Teresa can no longer answer her own questions. It doesn't bother her. She knows Patrick could, Patrick can, and most of the time that's enough.

There's a doctor who looks kinder than the others, and she looks at Teresa with sad eyes that aren't at all sad when she comes closer, and a smile that is both compassionate and something else altogether. She says her name is Sophie Miller, and she has long blond hair with brown roots showing, and Teresa doesn't try to make sense of her.

She comes inside Teresa's room with a notepad and a blue ink pen, but she sets them down without a second glance when she shuts the door behind her and Teresa can't help her frown, and she prepares herself for another round of harsh words and lies and whatever else – she wishes they would all disappear so she could be left with Patrick.

Sophie's hand is on her arm, soft and gentle and her hair is like a blond curtain around them. It reminds her of-

"Teresa," the other woman says, and it doesn't sound cautious or scared at all. "I'm not here to do anything that might upset you, and I'm not here to give you medications." Her tone is level, her eyes look dead, and Teresa doesn't _care_. She can't trust herself to know whether this is real or not. "I'm here to help you remember. We can do that, Teresa, together."

She searches around for golden hair and sparkling eyes, she frantically looks for the sun because suddenly she doesn't want to remember and she doesn't want _help_. She wants to get away. She wants Patrick. Real or not, she wants that one ray of light in her life.

**-;**

Someone once said, "There's too much darkness in this world. That's why I made the sun."

Teresa thinks that could have been God. Then she thinks that's stupid.

**-;**

(Sophie leaves a file on the small bedside table in Teresa's room, and tells her to read it when she feels ready.)

He kisses her when the doctors can't see. He tastes like blood and grass and old, old tea and she isn't sure she can feel his fingers as they trace her sides. He smiles against her lips, their teeth lightly against each other's like a broken pattern of a prayer. She tries to press up against him, so maybe she could fuse their bodies together; sadness is always better when you have someone to share it with.

She opens her eyes to see his are open too, and she finds their color to be comforting – like being rocked to sleep after doing too many grueling things. She continues to get closer, seeking out a warmth she hasn't felt in a too long time.

He says to her on an exhaled breath, "You make me feel real."

She tries very hard not to cry, because she worries everything will fall apart if she does, so she smiles at him instead, a small and wobbly thing. But she feels happy now. She does. "Yeah," she mumbles, "I know what you mean."

Maybe in another life, they could have been. Maybe in another life, this could have been real.

He holds her for what feels like hours, the fluorescents above them shining like platinum stars and the smile on her face plastered and big. She feels like she's underwater and all her words are bubbles and her tears just become one with the ocean, and he smiles at her too, like sunlight, like warmth, white around the edges as he leaves her alone.

When he finally disappears, she breathes out slow, leaving the bitterness in the air. There are no daylight eyes comforting her. There is nothing here. Nothing left besides her and the white room and the bottle of pills and a brother who can't see past his tears and doctors who try to dig up the ashes of her memories as if it matters.

There's a single window in the room, a small one, bright white curtains carefully drawn over it. The doctors had told her that if she ever thinks of it again, if she ever gets such urges, she should tell someone. Immediately. But there is no one. No one can stop her.

She remembers the first time she had sat down and opened her skin and hadn't found perfection. She'd found blood, and lots of it, and there had been a dark red mess on her tiled floor and she can't remember much, really, except for that dull throbbing in her ears and the voice that had kept telling her she wasn't enough. She remembers the first time she tried to swallow down a mouthful of little white pills and that burning amber liquid, and she remembers the scar down her face, how it had felt to be cutting into her cheek because she hadn't been perfect and so she had to be ruined. She remembers being thrown into the hospital and she remembers the reactions of her family and her friends.

She remembers blue, and with that, she opens the window. It's too small and too narrow, but she's small as well and if she twisted her body the right way maybe she could manage to get out with only a sprained ankle or a twisted wrist-

Her gaze falls on the files on the small wooden table beside her too-white bed, and for a moment she forgets the window and the blue sky beyond and the hard concrete below. "Read it when you feel ready," Sophie had said, and her eyes had said, _it will make you feel sane for a while_. She didn't quite care about the doctor's notes, and she doesn't quite care about them now, but she feels ready. And if not now, when?

She holds her breath and she doesn't know why when she takes the notes in her hands, smooths out the first of three pages. It's a hospital patient's profile. It doesn't look interesting, at first, but then she catches a flash of gold through the glossy paper of the patient's picture, and it feels like a gun shot through her stomach.

She spends the night curled up in the corner of her room, clutching the papers to her chest, words and words and words burned across the inside of her eyelids, and he watches through the photo in her hands as she cries.

**-;**

Maybe, just maybe, it doesn't matter if the sun is real or not, as long as it is warm and gold and a thing to make you burn and live at the same time.

Maybe, it's all okay. Maybe.

**-;**

Sophie is cautious, and it should surprise her a little because the doctor is never _cautious_, but it doesn't. Teresa just sits, staring ahead, and she thinks of golden tufts of feather hair and the clear blue sky. The files are scattered across her tiled floor.

"How do you feel?" Sophie asks, and Teresa doesn't think there's a right or wrong answer to that. She breathes in, deeply, and notices that the window behind the doctor is still open. Too small. Too narrow. Its curtains are too white, but she can see the blue and the sunlight behind them-

"He's real," she says, simply, and maybe she should feel happy. He is real, and he isn't. She doesn't even know anymore. The sky behind the curtains is blue. "I'm not mad."

The small curve of the doctor's lips could have been a smile, only it isn't. Teresa knows. She knows what real smiles look like, she has seen grins of sun and gold and warmth. Sophie probably wants to say, _Yes, you are mad_, because he's real but he isn't real in here. Sophie says instead, very carefully, "He was, yes. You knew him. Do you _remember_ that, or do you know now just because of the files I gave you?"

Teresa shrugs, because she doesn't know. Sometimes, she thinks she remembers. Sometimes, there's nothing. "I know he was my neighbor, and he had a wife who was killed. I know he went-" she pauses, collects herself, "-went mad after that, and was brought here. I know he killed himself. A year before I came here."

She read all that in Sophie's case files. And she thinks, she thinks she can remember looking out the window of a house that was her own, a thousand lifetimes ago, and watching a man and a woman, limned in gold, walking together from their front door to their car and looking happy and in love. She thinks she can remember her own hollow heart dying inside her chest every time she saw them kiss. She thinks she can remember all that, but maybe she can't and she's making it all up-

She doesn't know what's real and what's not. It scares her.

Sophie sighs, eyes softening, posture softening, and her hand is soft when it touches Teresa's own. "Perhaps you loved him. Before he lost his wife, before he was hospitalized, through your own – your own illness, perhaps you loved him before everything, and that's why your mind chose to cling to that love now, now that you found yourself here."

Teresa doesn't know. Teresa isn't sure. After all, it could be Patrick's ghost that shared her bed and grinned at her like the sun all along. He died here, didn't he? But that's stupid. She's stupid. She doesn't _know_.

But Sophie's still talking, in her bright white coat and her concerned airs, and Teresa thinks she wants the doctor to _please, stop_. Or maybe she wants her to _please, continue, I want to _know. "You were neighbors, you saw each other every day, it is highly plausible that you felt affection for him, and maybe even more than that, but I suspect you never acted on it because he was married." Teresa thinks that might be true, but she doesn't _remember_. "You were-" Sophie stumbles a little over the next word, "depressed, and the fact that your love was not mutual didn't help, maybe you felt like you weren't enough for him as you weren't for anyone else."

A year ago, the doctor's words would have made her shake and forget how to breathe and seek out a razor, or a bottle of pills, or _anything_, because they're true, she isn't good enough-

Now, it only feels liberating to hear it. She isn't mad. She _isn't_.

"And perhaps – perhaps, when you came here, you felt too alone, your mind had to connect to something, and it clung to the memory of Patrick Jane, and-"

Sophie carries on, she keeps talking and her voice is soothing, her words weaving stories that the bigger part of Teresa knows are true, but she doesn't have to concern herself with that, with how the doctor tells her about everything that feels like nothing.

Teresa thinks of him saying, _I killed someone I loved, and then someone who loved me_.

Teresa thinks of the sun.

**-;**

In the end, the window isn't too small and it isn't too narrow and she only sprains her ankle a little. It doesn't matter, and it doesn't hurt much. She only looks down, not around her and not at the sky.

She feels sunlight on her face, and the world around her is painted in hues of red and gold. She thinks, fleetingly, that it's beautiful.

She can hear his voice, _I killed someone I loved and then someone who loved me_, and maybe in another lifetime that's not true, maybe in another lifetime they're all alive and real-

She drops quickly, but right before she hits the ground, she sees his face. He smiles at her, his teeth white and his hair soft and feathery.

She mouths, _I love you_, and that's the last thing she ever does-

**-;**

Every single patient of the hospital is gathered in the long white corridor leading to the surgery room, and they're watching doctors in long coats wheel a stretcher as fast as they can through the small crowd, under the blinding lights of the fluorescents.

(When Teresa wakes up, she sees tubes and wires all around her and she can hear the humming of machines. Sophie is sitting beside her, her hand in hers, and her eyes are soft and gentle when she says, "I'll help you get better, Teresa. I promise, I'll help you.")

**-;**

Teresa Lisbon doesn't know what the world looks like anymore.


	3. Three

**a.n./** woah, this got a bit (a lot) longer than planned. shamelessly inspired by and loosely based on the tv show_ nikita_, because xander berkeley got to play a convincing red john in that show but not in _the mentalist_. no, I will never get over _that_ episode. but anyway. hope you'll like this one, I certainly liked writing it. (next one is something medieval-esque, which I hope won't be a total flop. it'll be different, that's for sure.)

thank you to everyone who is reading this and is taking the time to leave a review, your words mean the world!

* * *

**hold my hand forever (because we're god's favorite children)**

**.**

**.**

**THREE**

**.**

**.**

There was a story, once, about a man who could not die.

He was a king, as all bad men are, rich with gold and rubies and stinking of corruption, who lived in a castle which was on a hill which was on a river which was on an island, cushioned on all four sides by the push and pull of the amethyst sea. This king has lived for a hundred thousand years, and will live for a hundred thousand more, and again, and again, and again. This king will never die.

We all carry our deaths within us; the beggar girl on the streets and the rich merchant's wife in her spacious boudoir, the starving writer and the silver-tongued politician — our death ticks in every cell of our being, and every second brings you closer to that final exit of breath. It could be a knock on the head, a mugging gone wrong, a hard winter without heat. It could be any number of things. If you are lucky, you will go to sleep, and simply fail to wake up.

If you are not, your country will extend a red, red hand, and say: "You. I want you."

**-;**

"A European," Grace says to her. Teresa is not looking at her, two steps behind. Instead, she meets her own eyes in the polished mirror. Her hand rests lightly on the barre; she is measuring, carefully, the height of her extended leg, the angle at which her heel meets the barre. She lifts her chin, when she realizes that her back is just a smidgen off ramrod straight.

Teresa keeps her mouth shut. She only gives the barest indication that she heard by turning her head slightly to the side. Grace has flame red hair, pulled tight into a bun at the back of her head. She has eyes like cornflowers in summer, and lips like a rose petal. The guards are already beginning to look at her twice; Teresa, for her part, still looks like a boy from the neck down. Down the line, some of the other girls are listening as well, though they are pretending not to.

"They are bringing in a European," Grace repeats, excitedly. "Austrian, I think. They say he is going to break us in."

Down the corridor, there are footsteps. Teresa's eyes flicker to the door. She counts the steps, one, two, three, four, five, six _—_ "Grace, keep quiet," she says, calmly.

Madame enters the room, and stops at the door. Grace's mouth clamps closed. Wordlessly, Madame gestures to Teresa, for her to step out of the line. She does, lowering her leg slowly. Her muscles ache.

"Thirty two," Madame says, her voice a soulless, calculating thing. Her face is blank.

Teresa's stomach rumbles. Two days ago, one of her handlers had remarked that she could have done better at target practice than she did. When questioned, she had spoken back. Under her baby blue leotard, there are bruises blooming over her pale ribs, but what she regretted most was that she had missed out on dinner. The cooks had made spaghetti with mushrooms. She has not eaten in two days.

She settles her feet into the right position, sucks in a deep breath, and begins to turn.

One. Two. Three. The room spins around her. She feels lightheaded, but there is nothing for her to grab on to. Instead, she tenses her arms, grits her teeth, and pushes herself through. Four. Five. Six.

In 1895, Pierina Legnani had performed in front of a screaming audience in St. Petersburg. She had played Odile, and she had performed thirty two fouettés en tournant for a screaming crowd, lights and applause and her name repeated over and over back to her. Teresa closes her eyes, imagines white feathers trailing from her shoulders, the ache in her feet fading into a pleasant warmth, imagines a delirium of sights and sound—

Thirty two.

She stills, falling into the third position, and gazes back at Madame. She manages, very valiantly, not to fall.

Madame, a short woman with short black hair, twirls her finger like she had been waiting forever to do it. _The other way_.

Her nails are biting into the palm of her hand, and this is not comely in a young woman. Very deliberately, she loosens her grip. She begins to turn.

She thinks that she is bleeding. The bandages within her pointe shoes are soaking through, and she has never been as sure on her left as she has been on her right. There is something settling behind her eyes, a dull stabbing, and she is getting lightheaded, but failure is not an option. She spins, and the world blurs, and she feels sick, a vague rising of something in her stomach, but she has nothing to heave up; in the corner of her eyes, she sees Grace's red hair, and—

In 1895, Pierina Legnani played Odile and Odette, and as a display of her triumph and strength, she performed 32 fouettés en tournant in the Pas de Deux. She had gone off the page, had shattered the tableau with her finesse. They had called in Tchaikovsky's little brother to alter the music, to contain her skill. She had exceeded the bounds of the form. She had risen above the text. In 1895—

Teresa falters on the last. Her ankle turns. A blinding pain shoots up her calf, and she bites down on her lip to stifle the cry.

There is a short silence. Madame turns, colorless eyes hard, and opens the door. She nods to the guards outside.

Teresa is thrown into a gray room. She goes two more days without food or water. In the meantime, the man everyone only knows as Red John walks, a silent man through the silent halls to a room of silent girls. _They are bringing in a is going to break you in_.

**-;**

She sings, in her cell. She has been in this room enough times that she knows what is allowed — writing on the walls is prohibited, as is sleeping. If you fall asleep, the guards will come in and throw a bucket of ice cold water over you, to keep you awake, and keep doing it until you sit ramrod straight, freezing in the night air. Exercise is allowed.

She does a hundred push ups. She does a hundred pull ups on the metal bar over the door. She thinks, though she knows she shouldn't, that with a little bit more momentum, with enough weight, with her legs pushed out at the right angle—there is a very good chance that she can break down that door. She is not the best in her class, but she knows she can be. In five years, she will be picked out of the rest. In ten years, no one will keep her in a gray room ever again.

She sings to herself. There is a vague melody that she hums under her breath, and she can't remember where she heard it; knows it is not one of the concertos or sonatas that she can play from memory, on piano or violin. A bedside lullaby, it sounds like, to lull a restless child to sleep.

She begins to count the hours.

**-;**

In the old world, there is a story about a man who was a king, who lived in a castle on a hill which was on a river which was on an island, surrounded on all sides by the push and pull of the amethyst sea. He guarded his death more jealously than he did his life, and constructed many a devious trap and many a clever hoax to keep his death safe. He was a jealous man, and a cunning man, and a crueler king you have never met in your life. But it worked, didn't it?

He is not dead. He is still alive. He will wake in his castle on a hill, and of his thousand rooms, nine hundred and ninety nine will be dusted with cobwebs. And in each and every one, there is the ghost of a death never lived.

Though he was old, and corrupt, and avaricious, we are taught that immortality is possible. You just have to want it more than you want to live.

And revenge, oh, revenge is the same as immortality.

**-;**

"Helen almost threw herself out the ring yesterday," Grace says to her. Teresa is stretching, legs spread in a split. She folds down, so that the back of her spine is a long sinuous line, her forehead resting at her ankle. "And he made Tatiana stumble on her own feet. She broke her leg. They had to carry her out." Grace looks around, then back to her. "He's like a cat. Or a snake. You're out before you realize what's happening and he's barely even touched you."

Teresa notes, silently, that she has seen both Helen and Tatiana for the last time; clad in pastels, arms braced on a barre, their reflections limned in lamplight gold.

"What's he like?" she asks. She is not thinking of a face, or of a voice. She is thinking of his hands, of his feet and his stance, any preferred weapons, any contusions on the body that one might be able to spot through the uniform. A blind spot, an old scar that makes his parries slower, any shift in center of gravity. She is not going to allow this European to break her bones. Not hers. And even if he does, she will stay silent and put herself through training and ballet and training and ballet until it heals by itself. They will not make her disappear. They will not say she failed.

"Six feet. 180 pounds," Grace says, gaze drifting, idle, to the door. The European, they say, is always punctual. Grace turns back to her, notes her eyes, and says: "I think he has an old scar in the left armpit, clean wound, knife, probably. One inch at the most. It doesn't hinder him, but he holds himself differently at the shoulder."

"Could be a sprained collarbone." She is imagining her own kick, her thin leg and pale foot still clotted with blood from her pointe shoes. Hit a sprained collarbone at the right angle, and you can loosen the joint. Hit it again, apply the right kind of pressure at the right trajectory, and you can dislocate the arm. And while he flounders, she would bring her other foot up; she'd have to stretch for it, but she could do it—the back heel to the temple, and—

Red John enters the room.

Teresa straightens. There is a boxing ring in the center of the room, but the ground is not buffered with mattresses. If you fall, you fall hard. Through the rope, she spies a gray clad man, idling behind Red John. The group of chattering girls fall into silence.

"Wrong," she says to Grace as she rises out of her split.

"What?"

Teresa pulls her spine up, ramrod straight, and looks Red John in the eye, from across the ring. She says, without breaking her gaze, "He is not wounded at all."

She is his favorite. She knows this without having to be told; the same way she knows that she is the best, though she has not shown it. The same way that she knows that Grace talks too much, that Grace is bright and warm, that Grace has red hair. She knows she is his favorite, and she knows that the best must be saved for last. She inclines her head towards him.

Red John's lips quirk in a small, fond smile. He steps into the center of the room, and addresses the girls. Behind him, the European does not move from his fixed spot.

"Ladies." He has a kindly voice, the kind of voice that makes argument not only unnecessary, but crass. He gestures to the gray and gold presence behind him. "As before."

On his way past, he taps Lorelei on the shoulder. Grace is smirking.

The European is not watching the girls. He bends, and begins to unlace his boots. As he does so, Teresa spots something on his ankle; a sheen on a kind of material that is not black, is not leather. A holster. In it, a NR-40. His hair falls in front of his eyes, and she thinks that's when she first notices it's gold, reflecting the lamplight as though it were sunbeams. She draws in a small breath.

Lorelei is a thin girl; tanned and dark haired, with quick darting eyes and a vicious smile. She is better with a garrotte than most of the class, though she is most comfortable with a throwing knife. In the center of the ring, she rolls her shoulders, shifts her weight from one foot to the other. That is her first mistake.

The European rises, feet bare. Teresa's nails are digging into her palms. He enters the ring, letting the rope fall behind him. He is standing nonchalantly, hands loose at his sides, shoulders relaxed. From where she is standing, three meters away behind him, he is almost entirely unmoving.

When Lorelei pounces, the European slides smoothly to the side, quiet and effortless, and his hand is out to break her momentum at the stomach. Lorelei is toppling, ankle turning, and there is a sickening crunch, resonating in the quiet of the room.

There is a short beat of silence. The European settles back into his pose, hands loose at his sides. Around her, the girls are silent, and unmoving. Grace's eyes are wide, her lips white.

When Red John crosses the room, he taps Teresa's shoulder.

They are already pulling Lorelei out of the room, her screams muffled behind a gag sloppily applied. Nobody meets her gaze. No one even looks at that corner of the room. Teresa steps forward, ducks beneath the rope, and enters the ring. In the far corner, Lorelei is screaming, pleading, as they forcefully shove her out.

"No. No, no, no—please—don't—I can do better, I can do—"

The door slams shut. Teresa lifts her chin.

For the first time, she sees the European's face.

He is younger than she imagined. The first thing she notices is that there is a cut on his recently shaved jaw that does not correspond to a razor held in his own hand. The second thing she notes is that the hair falling behind his ear is ragged, and looks like it has been cut with a combat knife. The third thing she notes is that behind his slanted blue eyes, there is nothing. Not a thing.

_Ah_, she thinks.

There is a reason why the Department never has to worry about conflict of loyalties. There is a reason why defectors are unheard of within these halls; a statistical anomaly that belongs to other, less efficient branches. There is a reason why their faith is absolute, why their faith is — in the end — unnecessary.

He has a foot on her, and almost a hundred pounds. More than that, Teresa is willing to bet her next meal that the European does not care about broken bones the way she cares about broken bones.

What does someone broken want? What does a ghost fear, if it does not fear death?

"Hello," Teresa says.

Out of the corner of her eyes, Red John tilts his head. The European gives no indication that he has heard. Instead, he holds her gaze and begins to pace, one foot in front of another. She mirrors him, keeping the same distance between the two of them.

She thinks, then, oddly, that he has lips made for grinning like the sun. Then she imagines them bloody, because this is what she ought to do.

Blink once, shift your focus for a quarter of a second, and he will strike. There has been rumors of an operative within these halls, rumors of a man they say cannot die; a man they have pulled from death itself. In Israel, there had been a shot, through rain and snow and hail at a distance of twelve hundred meters, made in an impossible time frame of an opening, with a precision unheard of even for this Department. In West Berlin, there had been a man who had been selling secrets to the wrong people, and there had been a carefully blended variation of cyanide in his evening Cabernet Shiraz. And then, there had been the orphanage—

"We're not supposed to know about you," she says. "But if the handlers didn't want us to talk, they would have shut us up for good. The diplomat in Paris, two years ago — was that you?"

Blink and you'll miss it. The fingers on the European's right hand twitches.

"What about Budapest?" she asks. Something is clicking into place behind the European's eyes, but it doesn't look like awakening, and it makes her feel wrong. It feels like the nothingness in his eyes is what was wrought and made up in the first place, but it's only for a fraction of a second so it can't be true. Her ankle is still weak from her fall the other day, and now she feels its faint ache. The European is most definitely not wounded in the left arm.

This is not a combat exercise she can win. _This is not a combat exercise_.

"What about the hospital in Prague?" She is almost babbling now, anticipation building in her chest, readying to burst. The European's fists tighten. "The orphanage—"

"You talk too much," he says, and she spots, almost in a haze, the knife in his boot.

He has an American accent.

This is all she has time to process before she launches herself, rolling between his legs until she stands behind him on the other side of the ring. She is breathing hard, hands fisted at her side. She keeps herself small and tense. She is thinking of escape routes, thinking of the precise angle at which she has to launch herself to land a hit — he is not wounded on the left side. If anything, that is the side she should avoid.

The European is not even breathing hard. He turns slowly, and everything about him says that he has all the time in the world. She rises on shaky legs.

He is expecting her to evade; expecting her to dodge, because now he knows that she is not Lorelei. He is expecting her to slide, again, between his legs, come up behind him and wait for the hit. He is expecting her to be clever, because this is not a combat exercise. The European lunges, effortlessly almost, like a golden cat, and she launches herself into a twirl, imagines feathers trailing from her shoulders, imagines flight.

In 1985, Pierina Legnani had performed in front of a screaming crowd. As a display of her strength and triumph, she had performed 32 fouettés en tournant in the Pas de Deux of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake. She had exceeded the bounds of the music, she had triumphed above the walls of the form.

This is not a training exercise, and Teresa is not Lorelei, not Helen, not Tatiana. The European keeps himself low, and a fraction of a second before he adjusts himself for her unexpected trajectory, she has wrapped her thighs around his neck, and given a twist.

His eyes widen in surprise, and a second later, the back of her head hits the pavement hard. Stars light behind her closed lids, and for a moment she can't breathe. The European has the fingers of his right hand wrapped around her throat, and his left is coming down towards her face. She closes her eyes.

A few inches from her face, the pavement is cracking under the impact.

She opens her eyes slowly, and realizes he didn't even touch her.

The silence around them is deafening. Slowly, he brings his left hand up to his mouth, and pulls off the leather glove. He is not wounded. In the low light, the band around the European's ring finger gleams platinum.

"This one," he says to Red John, voice barely audible. His eyes are once again empty, but she thinks, now, that it is a mirror put on wrong. The nothingness in them is different now than before, as though he has trouble keeping it in place- "This is the one you are looking for."

Red John barks an order. She is his favorite, she thinks vaguely, still numb, as five armed guards enter the ring, their guns aimed at the back of the European's head. He does not move. Red John enters the ring.

"Stand down," he says to the European. "Stand down, _please_."

For a moment, she thinks they are going to shoot him in front of her, thinks that they are going to splatter his blood all across her face, ruin her shirt when she has so few. There is a second of tense silence, and the guards tighten their grip. And then the European stands, glides up and backwards, hair spun from gold like silk on top of his head.

"This one," he says. "This is the one you want."

Red John's gaze falls on the empty holster at his ankle. He turns to Teresa.

In her hand, the NR-40 gleams, the blade the same glittering silver as the European's wedding ring.

**-;**

"You talk too much," the European had told her in perfectly American accented English, and his had been a ghost of a voice.

She has a sprained elbow and bruises in the shape of flowers, blooming red and purple across the pale skin of her back. In 1895, Pierina Legnani had risen above her form, had transformed the text. In the breath before the first turn, there had been silence. In the split second after the thirty second, there had been chaos.

"You didn't land a hit," Red John says to her after. "If this had been in the field, he would have killed you."

"Yes," she replies. "But this wasn't a combat exercise."

Red John watches her carefully. "I wanted all of you to know that you couldn't beat him. He is not our best. He is _the_ best. If you don't know when to back down, then you are worse than dead. Worse than blind and deaf and dumb, because he would have taken you alive, and made you talk. The objective was simply get out of the ring."

She holds her silence.

"You knew that, didn't you, Teresa?"

She keeps her mouth shut.

"Then why didn't you? You had a chance."

Underneath her hands, the blade of the NR-40 is warming to the touch. "I did better than pass the test," she says, low and quiet. "I changed it."

In five years, no one will remember the names Lorelei, Helen, or Tatiana. But in five years, they will all remember that Teresa Lisbon had disarmed the European who is not a European and who is the best and-

"What's his story?" she asks, lifting her gaze, fingers lightly tapping against her knees. "What's his name? Where did you pick him up from?" She pauses. "Is he married?"

She does not expect an answer. _I changed the test_.

She is thrown into solitary confinement for disobeying objectives. That night, Red John sends her a blanket and a meal. Wine, a steak, roast potatoes, and a thick slab of freshly baked bread. They let her keep the knife.

**-;**

It is four and a half months before she sees him again.

She turns seventeen at the Palais Garnier in Paris. She has a woman's form now, and her lips are painted red. She has on a dress meant for an older woman that is long and black and clings agreeably, leaving her shoulders bare, there are expensive emeralds hanging from her ears, and she is accompanying a German diplomat who has a taste for women younger than is strictly smiled upon.

It was supposed to be an assignment for two girls; she had been paired with Grace before she had been called to Washington, and intelligence had decreed that while the situation is not ideal, Teresa is capable of handling the target alone.

She is Rosaline Beliveau tonight; she has a boarding school French accent and a laugh that is both light and husky whenever the German —Fuerst— gets too close. Rosaline Beliveau knows that she is beautiful, and Rosaline Beliveau does not mind being touched, so long as you pay the right price. Teresa Lisbon has been told that she is not a good actress, but intelligence thought otherwise; Rosaline Beliveau sits, poised, lips curved into a smile that is both demure and sinuous, eyes sparkling, bright like her earrings. On stage, Odile has just arrived at the ball.

"I used to dance, you know," she says to Fuerst, leaning close so that her breath brushes the outer shell of his ear. They are in their own private box, curtained in red velvet that looks like blood. There is a glass of champagne in her hand, and a waiter waiting outside the door for any needs she may have. There are so many things she can do here that would go unnoticed until the curtain draws, and Fuerst would enjoy only a handful of them. She rests her hand lightly on his knee. "I could dance this coda in my sleep."

"Perhaps we shall find out later just how well you can dance," Fuerst says, low and hoarse and accented. Rosaline Beliveau giggles, and Teresa Lisbon counts the increased pulse in his throat, feels a vague twinge of contempt.

Rosaline Beliveau giggles again, splays her hand over his thigh, and Teresa Lisbon, out of sight, drops a pinch of white powder into Fuerst's glass.

SP-117 has no taste, no smell, and no color. SP-117 is effectively operational within the minute of ingestion. Rosaline Beliveau giggles into the crook of Fuerst's neck, and Teresa Lisbon waits for him to take a sip.

On stage, Siegfried has just been convinced to dance with Odile, though his heart belongs to Odette, the white princess. It is a perennial dilemma of the heart, of the soul; it is the perennial crux of living. In Fuerst's home country, there is the story of the doppelganger; an evil version of yourself that haunts your time on earth, that shadows your every step. A mirror image refracted back with strange angles. A darker version, staring back at you through the glass.

Fuerst's eyes cloud, and Teresa Lisbon asks, "Who sold you the file?"

She has seven minutes. Fuerst's tongue is lolling in his mouth, and Teresa Lisbon asks again, "_Who sold you the file_?"

"I—" Fuerst is looking at her in confusion. Six and a half. "I—"

She has a gun holstered at her thigh, and she had hoped she wouldn't have to use it. She would have preferred a knife, but for appearance's sake, nothing threatens quite like a Kahr.

"I—"

"Your source in the White House. Who is it?"

Fuerst's fingers begin to shake. She catches the glass of champagne neatly as he drops it, and sets it on the low table. "I—"

The drug takes effect. Fuerst looks around, as if confused. He meets her eyes, blinks twice, and says, "McAllister."

Below, on the stage, Siegfried has exited, and Odile dominates the floor. The orchestra rears for its crescendo. The conductor gestures for the drums, there is a collective intake of breath, and Odile begins to turn. The first of her thirty two. Teresa Lisbon leans forward as if to kiss Fuerst, positioning her body over his as she unhooks the gun from her thigh. The music rises, and she pulls the trigger. The bullet leaves its chamber, and she has left the box before he has started to bleed.

Outside the opera house, it is snowing. She wraps her fur close around her bare shoulders, and slips into a black car. Somewhere within, the waiter has found the body. Somewhere within, there is a scream.

"Hotel le Bristol," she tells the driver. There is no response. She says, again, this time impatient, "Hotel le Bristol."

The driver says, in American accented English, "You should have used a knife."

He is wearing a chauffeur's uniform, his hair a mass of golden locks beneath the cap. The town car hums down the Boulevard des Capucines, and the driver's wedding ring glints silver in the dark.

**-;**

Immortality is like the faith in your country, the will to do anything and everything for the ones who saved you and fed you and trained you and made you the _best_-

Immortality is like revenge. Anything and everything.

**-;**

Teresa spends the drive cleaning her Kahr and watching the streetlight spill into the car like gold. It paints everything yellow, the occasional shadow flickering over his eyes.

"How did they do it?" she asks, as they approach city limits. The interior of her Kahr is smooth and oiled, and she slides it into the holster at her thigh. He is staring straight ahead, hands on the wheel. He is a careful driver; a bit too fast, but never fast enough to draw attention, every hairpin turn considered, as if he has mapped out the exact numerical angle of the curve. He does not reply, and she makes a disdainful noise, looking out the window.

There is silence. She considers the name: McAllister. When the order had come through for the name and for the blood, she had not questioned it. He had been buying secrets, and whatever secret he had recently bought was too valuable for it to slip. The nature of buying being, of course, that someone was selling. Supply and demand; tenets of a system black with rot. A single thread which lead to someone within their midst, and the Department wanted that particular thread pulled out of the line-up without fuss. There will be a purge soon.

The smallest sound makes her turn her head. In the front seat, his steady breathing has broken on an irregularity. She watches him carefully. The light from a passing streetlamp hits his face, and she notes a small crease between his eyebrows.

"I don't know," he says finally. He is still staring straight ahead, and Teresa opens her mouth but he is quicker, "Do you love your country?"

"Yes," she replies without thinking.

He nods, a little, an imperceptible thing. "What would you do for it?"

It is the most she has ever heard him say to her. _You told me I talk too much, remember_? She thinks, then, another made up thing? Like the nothingness in his eyes, or was it real, was it – she says, "Anything."

A small sound falls from his lips, and she would have thought it was a chuckle but of course it can't be. She remembers the day she first saw him and thought of his mouth twisted into a bright, bright grin. She speaks before she can comprehend, "You are the best, aren't you? Whatever you have gone through, it was worth it. You are the best. I want to be like you. I want to be the best."

"You have to beat me first," he says, and smiles, and it looks genuine. She has to try very hard not to let herself believe in it, to remind herself there's a reason he's the best he's the best he's the best-

She does not ask any more questions. They drive in silence, until they arrive at an old chateau, at the end of a long, lonely road surrounded by snow dusted trees. The car idles to a stop in front of the house. He pulls the key out of the ignition, and sits very still in his seat. There is no more irregularity in his breathing. He pulls the cap off his head, and stares straight ahead. "Who was it?"

She does not know what it is that makes her stop, what it is that makes the hair on the back of her neck stand up straight; only that it does, and this has kept her alive more than once. Her hand rests on the gun in the holster, fingers gripped lightly around the hilt. There is less than three feet's distance between them, and she has seen him in action. He is fast, but so is she. She can get the gun out before he reaches for her. It is his right arm that is facing her, so she has a relatively good chance before he can get a good grip with his left. She can make the shot. She can shoot the Department's most valuable asset in the forehead before he can put his fingers around her throat.

"Take your hand off the gun," he says, calmly, "and tell me the name."

"Fuerst isn't your mission. He's mine."

"Fuerst is not a _mission_," he says, voice now harder, almost desperate and it sounds almost like a snap. She blinks, twice, and he seems to collect himself. "There's much more to it than you think there is, Teresa Lisbon. Tell me the name."

Something turns in her stomach. For a second, her vision goes red, and she does loosen her grip on the gun, fingers slipping around the metal before she remembers herself. A split second later, it is out of the holster, and pointed at the back of his neck, positioned to hit right below the hair wrought from sunlight. She feels like she doesn't want to shoot him.

He gives no indication that he has noticed the barrel at his neck. Her eyes, momentarily, are drawn to the way the faint moonlight reflects on his wedding band, and she wonders, for the umpteenth time, what's happened and what it means. He tilts his head slightly to the side, says evenly, "Aiming a gun at the best? Is this defection, Teresa?"

"I would never," she hisses, and her throat constricts, and the barrel of the gun bites harder into his neck. There is a part of her, a little girl never silenced, which is screaming, which is sobbing in fear. "I would never — I gave my life—"

He bears this with patience. He repeats, now softer, "I need the name."

"And then what?" she bites out, voice hoarse. There is nothing in her which is not them, which had not been bred into her with electrodes and pain. There is — Teresa is loyal. Teresa is the most loyal of all of them. Teresa kills because her country asked her to. She is loyal. She is loyal she is loyal she is loyal she is loyal—

_Pull the trigger,_ she thinks. _Do it. Do it now. Get out of here. Pull the trigger. Pull the trigger_.

She takes too long.

**-;**

(In her earliest memories, there had been snow. Snow, and yellow walls, and her own breath misting in front of her face. She has a vague memory of a woman with green eyes like her own, who smiles at her kindly, and Teresa knows that she loves her the way she knows how to disassemble a rifle in under ten seconds or sever the carotid artery with nothing more than industrial wire. This woman loves her, and this woman sings her to sleep. This woman puts warm milk in her hands, and kisses her on the cheek before she puts her to bed. This woman dies with a garrotte around her throat, and this woman, like warmth and lullabies and childhood, is gone.

"You have a new mother now," a man who introduces himself as Red John says to her, sometime after. "She is mother to us all."

She cries, and is beaten. She cries out, and is beaten again. She demands to see her mother, and is thrown into a cold cell without food or water. She screams, and they put her into solitary confinement in a room so thickly soundproof that the only company she has is the sound of her own heart; beating, beating, beating. It never stops beating.

She is six, and has never been so aware of the sound of her life refusing to ebb away, has never been so terrified of the sound of her own heart. More than the electrodes or the tanks or the cells, it is this that keeps her shivering into the night, years after. She screams herself hoarse in the few hours after, begging to be left out, begging to escape from the sound of her own life. Sometimes at night she still dreams of that room; the sound of her own heart permeating through the din, a clockwork mechanism that keeps count of her mortality.

"You have a new mother now," Red John says to her, sometime after. "She is mother to us all."

She learns not to scream, soon after. She learns not to cry, either. She learns not to speak back, not to look challengingly at her handlers, learns to duck her head and comply. She is Red John's favorite; he tells her she is the pupil most like him, who knows when to hold her tongue and when not to, who understands the preciousness of what beats in her chest; how every thump is hard won. How every thump drives you mad.

Red John tells her, in quiet moments, that she has the makings of something great. He knew she was special from the start, he tells her. He knew she would serve her mother with all that she is, with all that she can be. He tells her that she is a wolf in a sea of girls, and does not bother to mention that wolves and girls; they are the same.

What does Teresa Lisbon believe? What does Teresa Lisbon whisper like a prayer, what does Teresa Lisbon worship, if she has never been to a church, if she has never sat at a pew, if she has never held a bead of rosaries in her hands?

Teresa Lisbon believes-)

**-;**

She wakes up in the dark.

Her hands are tied, flat, to the arms of an antique chair. Her feet are tied at the ankles to the legs, and the industrial grade nylon is strong enough that she has no hope of breaking them. He is sitting opposite her, eyes hollow and mouth a thin line that feels too wrong to look at, and he is sharpening a knife.

She knows, she has heard, that if he wanted he could take a chair of his own, sit down opposite her, and talk to her; talk and talk and talk until he had made her mind his own and could play it at his will. She has heard of what he can do with words.

He says, without looking at her, "Who did Fuerst name?"

She clamps her mouth shut, gritting her teeth. She is _not _— they are not strangers to enhanced interrogation. They are not strangers to pain. Water. Electricity. Knives. She knows them all, has sat through them all. He sets down his k-bar, and asks, again, "Who did Fuerst name?"

What does Teresa Lisbon believe in?

She says nothing. If they truly believe — if they really think that she would turn — then this name is the only thing keeping her alive.

His hands are very still on his knife. The single lamp in the room casts a gold strip of light on the wooden floor, and she watches his fingers tighten, infinitesimally, on the knife. He comes closer, and she sees it, for the first time, and there is no denying that it's there, behind the cool blue glass of his eyes and the sharp angles of his mouth —

He is desperate.

He _hurts_.

She feels something tighten in her chest, something she doesn't want to put a name on, and suddenly she wants to vomit, her throat is dry and there's a loud beating in her ears. Her eyes burn. She asks, voice strained, "What's your name?"

He seems to be steeling himself, and she thinks she can trace the shudder running through him, down his spine, his fingers tightening, knuckles turning white. He says, not quite as steadily, forced, "Who did Fuerst name?"

She thinks of fractured mirrors, broken glass, reflections distorted and dead and empty eyes and endless pain and screaming that will never stop. She swallows. "What is your name?"

For a long time, there is silence. The room is tense, and she cannot breathe. What does a broken shadow want? What does a ghost believe in, if not loyalty and death? He stands, and she holds her breath, and her head hurts and her heart hurts and everything is slowly going numb all at once. She waits, and he waits, until she feels like the room is about to burst in an explosion of secrets and blood and shards of glass.

Her lips part, but she stays silent. And then-

He breaks.

**-;**

What does Teresa Lisbon pray to? What does she worship?

How wholeheartedly does she believe in the country? How absolutely has she given her body and her heart and her soul to her homeland? How much of her belongs to her, and her alone?

To hoard yourself is selfish, Red John told her. Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.

What does Teresa Lisbon pray to? What does she worship?

**-;**

She can hear her own heart beating. Or maybe it's his. She has reached this point, she cannot quite tell, but it doesn't matter, she thinks, it doesn't matter. There are things more important-

She knows about the band of platinum around his ring finger and the name behind it and about the face that wore it. She knows that her name was Angela and that it was fitting because she was an angel come to earth herself, with hair spun from gold and eyes that shone like diamonds in the sunlight and lips that smiled like a dream. She knows about Charlotte and that she played the piano and that she loved strawberry ice cream and hated frilly dresses. She knows that his name is Patrick, and that he worked for the CIA. She knows that his family was murdered and that an enemy of the Department had ordered the hit. She knows that he died that day, and swore to do anything and everything for revenge, that he drew the Department's attention and has since been doing everything in his power to make them trust him, to tell him the name. She knows that Fuerst knew, and that _she_ was sent to kill him because the name would mean nothing to her and the Department doesn't want Patrick to know. She knows, she knows, she knows;

She knows his name is Patrick, and that this was his breaking point.

She is no longer tied to the chair. They are lying on the floor, on the dust and the creaking wood, eyes fixed on the dark lines of the slanting ceiling above. He has been crying. Now, he whispers, so quietly she thinks she only imagined it, "I am a monster."

Revenge is like immortality.

Revenge is like loyalty to your country.

Anything and everything.

Her stomach coils and clenches, and her head hurts. Her mouth is dry, and she tastes salt on her tongue. She wants to take his hand in hers, run her fingers over the smooth expanse of his palm, trace the line of his wedding ring, press herself against him and say, _no, you're not_, she wants to dry his tears and tell him, tell him, tell him, but she can't, and she won't, and she tries very hard to remember what it is that she believes in.

She says, very quietly, "You have killed a lot of people." When he doesn't say anything, she presses a little closer to him, "So have I. So have we all."

She thinks of red velvet curtains and the sound of her own heart beating and a woman with a kind face and eyes green like her own. She thinks of green grass, bright with morning dew, and a little girl sitting at a piano. She thinks of blood on snow, and a training room, and her own reflection staring back at her through a polished mirror, wrapped in a pastel leotard and limned in lamplight gold. She thinks of guns and knives and wedding rings.

Her breath catches when he asks her, fingers brushing against her own, the cold of the floorboards seeping through their clothes, "What do you believe in, Teresa?"

Her body feels like lead pulling her soul to the floor, holding her down, and her vision is blurry. Ballet guns blood emeralds snow blood training country mother loyalty. She opens her mouth, and that's when she realizes her nails are digging into the wood, her fingertips bleeding. "He said-"

Her hand is in his own, and she feels that they could die, here, now, loyal and broken and unfaithful to everything and put together again in death like bloodied glass splinters. The floor beneath her feels like nails digging into her skin. "He said, McAllister."

For the longest time, there is only the sound of their hearts beating in sync, and then she feels his fingers wrap more tightly around her hand, like a hellflower's vice grip on a dying insect, like needles shoving themselves into her skin. She thinks, _I should have pulled the trigger._ She thinks, _what do I believe in_?

"Now," he says on an exhale of a breath, eyes fixed on the ceiling, hand still holding her own. "Now, we wait."

She didn't think she had enough life left in her to feel confused, but somehow she does, and her brow furrows, her chest constricts, "For what?"

He shifts next to her, his pulse racing, and she can hear his heartbeat, erratic, filling the room. "This was supposed to me a mission. You were supposed to be my mission. The Department deemed someone had to look out for you while you were dealing with Fuerst. They didn't send _me_, of course, but it wasn't too hard to incapacitate the one they actually sent." His voice is caught between excited and terrified, a thing both crazed and trapped, and she feels that it should scare her. "They'll be here any minute now. Any minute now."

"The Department?"

"Yes," he breathes, and his grip tightens even more - "_Yes_."

"What do they have to do with anything?" With every passing moment, she feels like she has made a mistake, and she tries to think of her loyalty, tries to remember her country and the blood and everything she has given up and everything she owes. But all that comes to mind is green eyes looking down at her with love, and golden hairs tangled in her own dark ones, and a pair of sparkling wedding rings. "What-"

"You don't even know your _employer's_ real name, do you?" he asks, but it isn't really a question and she isn't sure he's even talking to her anymore.

The first time she met Patrick, she had been able to roll away from him and avoid the first hit. She had been saved for last and she'd changed the rules of the test, and Red John had brought her food in her cell and he had let her keep the knife because she was – because she is – his favorite and there is her country, her loyalty which she cannot stray from, and-

Patrick asks her, this time even more quiet, "What do you believe in?"

She thinks that she has been dead a thousand years.

**-;**

He somehow convinces her to take a bath. There is an old bathroom with a rusty bathtub and he takes care to bring her warm water, leaves when she starts taking off her clothes and tells her to call if she needs anything.

Half an hour later, a team in black shows up, to extract Patrick Jane and the junior recruit. It is Red John who walks into the bathroom. "Teresa," he says.

This is it, she thinks. A bullet shot between the eyes, and oblivion, the end of life and beliefs and loyalties and everything. The heart stops in the most banal of ways.

She huddles into herself, wrapped in an old, moth bitten towel. She looks from Red John, to the men in black, and finally to Patrick, who is standing in his gray suit and gold hair and platinum wedding ring, face blank and eyes filled with nothingness; she knows his hands are wrapped around a Glock inside his front pocket. Red John has his back to him.

The sun is rising, outside, bars of pale light filtering through the shuttered window, and Patrick walks up to Red John, says, voice low and quiet, "This one. This is the one you want."

A shot rings out, and Teresa doesn't flinch. She sits, wrapped in her towel with hair dripping all over the wooden floorboards, watches the men in black being shot, one after another, until there are none. She thinks she sees something like surprise in Red John's eyes, before his body falls to the floor, limp and heavy and empty in death.

There is dust, and blood, and water, and sunlight, and Patrick is in the middle of it all, gun slipping from his hand, and he is left looking at it like something vile, and cruel, and alive; like a monster, and she thinks she has never seen anyone look more shaken in her entire life.

_You've killed a lot of people_.

_So have we all_.

In the middle of it all, on a floor of dead bodies, Patrick sits, _falls_, and is alone.

She doesn't know how much time has passed when she stands, hands holding her moth bitten towel tight around her body, and walks over to him, hand reaching out just slightly. She won't talk to him, but she knows he will look up, hair of gold falling in front of his dead eyes, and then she will think of something to say.

Without doing any of those things he murmurs, head in his hands, "What do you believe in?"

She thinks of snow and blood and mirrors. She thinks of the sound of her own heart beating. She thinks of flags waving against a clear blue sky, and pale hands wrapped around an open throat. She thinks of Odette and Odile, and remembers the dance by heart. Thirty two turns, and she could count them now. She thinks of the little girl still screaming, caught in an onslaught of bullets, and she thinks of knife wounds and poison and her seventeenth birthday in Palais Garnier with a Kahr strapped to her thigh and Fuerst's arm around her shoulders. She thinks of gray walls, and lullabies, and green eyes like her own-

She sinks down on her knees next to him, and lays her head on his shoulder. She puts her hand in his, fingers tracing his wedding ring, and says, "I believe in this."

Something escapes his lips, then, something like a sob, and then he pulls her close.

For the longest time, they stay in silence.


End file.
